The invention relates to methods and apparatus for fitting sealing or trimming strips. Examples of such sealing or trimming strips are channel-shaped sealing or trimming strips for sealing around openings in motor vehicle bodies. Such openings may be provided with flanges, formed by joined edges of the adjacent bodywork, and the channel-shaped strips are embracingly fitted onto, and grip, the flanges. The flanges are thus covered and protected, and shielded from the occupants of the vehicle. Where such a strip is to act as a sealing strip, an outside wall of the channel may carry a sealing part, such as made of softer material, which is supported by the strip to run around the opening so as to be compressed by and to seal around the periphery of the door of the opening.
Co-pending United Kingdom Patent Application No. 8727690 (Serial No. ) discloses such a sealing or trimming strip. The strip disclosed in this co-pending specification is channel-shaped but initially the side walls of the channel are splayed apart so as to enlarge the mouth of the channel. This eases the initial application of the channel onto the flange because the splayed apart side walls hardly make contact with the flange surfaces during this process. Thereafter, the splayed apart channel walls are pressed towards each other and thus towards the surfaces of the flange, and the strip subsequently retains itself in this new configuration in which it grips firmly against the flange surfaces. Examples of methods and apparatus according to the present invention may be used to press the splayed apart channel walls together.